Follow Your Heart

“Forget your lust, for the rich man’s gold, all that you need is in your soul…”

– Lynyrd Skynyrd

I was sitting at my desk trying to get into the flow of studying. I had re-read the same paragraph in my ‘Human Resources’ textbook a few times, but not a word was going in. I put on my music playlist to try and get into some sort of flow so that I could get past that paragraph. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” came on and the opposite happened…

“… all that you need is in your soul… follow your heart and nothing else…”

That was it. I closed my textbook and stopped studying for that business degree that I believed I needed, but had no internal desire to complete. That line, in that moment, told me everything I needed to hear. I was halfway through that degree. Many people that had started studying similar degrees at the same time as me had already completed it. Something inside was stopping me, and I had been fighting that resistance for too long. That day, with the help of Lynyrd Skynyrd, I stopped the fight.

My internal war didn’t stop that day, though. I kept second-guessing my decision, often needing to fight that feeling of inferiority when in the company of those with a string of degrees behind their names. It’s a battle to trust your own path when the world only seems to value the well-trodden one. The pinnacle of this conflict came a few years ago.

“I’m not like them, but I can pretend…”

– Kurt Cobain

I was invited to Paris to speak at a Nutrition Convention. I still don’t quite understand why. I endured a pre-presentation dinner one-on-one with one of the key organiser-scientists, who had assumed I was the scientist who had spent the last 20 years of her life studying the gut microbiome. He was visibly disappointed when he found out I wasn’t. I was “just” a yoga teacher nutritionist there to talk about mindful eating and nourishing ourselves intuitively. I returned the compliment by not staying at the conference long enough to be personally presented and photographed receiving my ‘prestigious certificate’ from him.

That feeling of not belonging can push you to one of two places: cynicism and possible addictions to numb it; or a deeper trust in your own path.

I’ve made the conscious decision not to destroy my hope with substances. As tempting as it can be, I’ve lost too many hours to some, I have to admit, very fine bottles of wine that I can never get back (the hours nor the wine!). I’ve chosen the other path. The path of trust.

This path requires us to question the structures we’re told to revere. Imagine the answers we could come up with if we weren’t forced to conform to some curriculum that a professor developed based on his own experience, studies and interests. Imagine the connections we could see if we allowed our minds to explore all that is around and within us. Imagine the problems we could solve when not forced to conform to the formula that created those problems in the first place.

This is not a path of ignorance; it is a path of intuitive learning. One of my favourite pastimes when a concept or idea pops into my head, is to Google it. I see what comes up, always surprised by the number of people who have had similar ideas. Some have taken the thought beyond just an idea and turned it into a book, or even their life’s work.

This is how our brains work naturally, without Google, if we allow them. You cast a wide web of curiosity and see what ‘food’ is caught in it. You then make the choice of what will truly nourish you. I have found the most amazing, nourishing food in this web — things no formal curriculum could ever have served me. Each discovery was a breadcrumb from my heart, leading me closer to my own truth.

This is the reward for following your heart. You don’t get a certificate to hang on the wall. You don’t get the approval of a disappointed scientist in Paris. You get something far more valuable. You get a curriculum designed by your own soul. You find the others who heard the same song you did. You find your purpose, not at the end of a degree, but in every moment of the search.

Listen to the resistance. Listen to the song that stops you in your tracks. That is your compass. That is your truth. Follow it, and nothing else.